


Whatever It Takes

by Mohini



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slightly Broken Super Soldiers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-04 21:14:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15849489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: It’s one of those inconvenient sorts of truth that no one wants to address, the awareness that their spangled icon is a tiny bit damaged.





	Whatever It Takes

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on Tumblr @Mohini-Musing

Steady blows rain down on the heavy bag, and the arms dealing them move at a speed that betrays the enhanced aspects of their body. Breath passes in and out of pursed lips and flared nostrils, a mountain of strength balanced on loose knees and slightly raised on the balls of overlarge feet. The bag swings, back and forth, back and forth, the chain creaking and squealing under the strain. A stack of them waits to one side of the gym. Tony keeps them well stocked, hoping that the aggression living in the tower will destroy equipment rather than his little found family.

Sam watches this performance, and the text from Barnes earlier helps him see the tension in those shoulders, the hurt hiding in eyes focused solely on that swinging bag. When the chain snaps and the bag flies, Steve trudges grimly to it, flings it to one side, and hangs a new one. It’s nothing new. Everyone knows this is how he lets off steam, has done from shortly after waking in SHIELD back before the Avengers were formed. 

Sam chooses that point to speak up, because a startled Steve is a hazard to everyone. It’s one of those inconvenient sorts of truth that no one wants to address, the awareness that their spangled icon is a tiny bit damaged. Steve looks up at the sound of his name being called, makes a face somewhere midway between smile and grimace, and steadies the swinging bag with an outstretched palm.

“Bucky sent you?” he asks.

“Yeah. He’s worried about you, man.”

“I’m fine. Just need a minute alone.”

“You sure about that? Where I’m standing it looks like you’re not getting anywhere beating the fire out of the bags.”

“I’m not really up for My Pal Counselor™ at the moment, Sam,” Steve admits.

“You saying you’re not so fine, then?”

“Fuck off, Sam,” Steve growls, turning and beginning to swing at the bag again. 

“You kiss your mama with those lips?” Sam blurts out before he can think better of it. He’s considering escape routes and exactly how fast he can sprint as Steve turns to face him.

“My mother, along with anyone else who gives a red-hot damn about my language is dead, Sam. They’re not coming back, and I’ll speak however I want.”

“That why you’re running away from the person who is still here with you?” Sam presses. 

It’s like the air goes out of Steve. His shoulders drop, all the fire dying in his eyes.

Sam keeps his mouth closed, watches as Steve wraps his arms around himself and slowly drops to the floor, sitting like a child with legs crossed beneath him and head bowed. He breathes slowly, and his shoulders hitch a few times before the tears come. Sam moves closer, kneeling a few feet from him, present but not close enough to provoke fight or flight instincts. 

“Talk to me, man,” he says, voice low, a barely there rumble of a whisper. Barnes explained what happened, but he needs to hear it from Steve’s lips. 

Steve shakes his head, blowing out a shaky breath. Sam pulls his phone out, shoots a message to Barnes to tell him to come. Steve’s right. He doesn’t need Sam and his counselor voice right now. He needs his Bucky, no matter how much he seems to think said man can’t be allowed to see him vulnerable. 

It’s only a few moments later that the door slips open and Barnes is kneeling next to Steve, pulling him into his arms and holding on tight. “I’ve got you, Stevie,” he tells him. “I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart.”

Sam pushes himself back onto his feet to leave the room but Barnes holds up one hand in warning, patting the air to tell him to stay put. Steve is breathing in shallow gasps now, and Barnes is rocking him as though he were a child, whispering something that’s too low for unenhanced ears to catch. Steve shakes his head, obviously trying to disagree and Barnes shushes him. 

“Hey Sam?” Barnes asks, a bit louder.

“Hmm?”

“You miss your Riley?”

“Every day. Why?”

“That make you a shitty person?”

Sam raises his eyebrows, but manages to bite his tongue before shooting back something ill thought out. “Makes me human. Why?”

“So you’re saying you can miss him and not be a crap friend to the people you’ve got?”

“Yeah. Not a limited supply of love,” Sam replies, figuring out quickly where Barnes is going. 

“You trust your bird man, right Stevie?” Barnes asks him. 

Sam bites down the urge to correct him, loudly. Neither the time nor the place, he chides himself. 

Steve nods, still balancing on the knife’s edge of emotional wreck and actually crying. Sam suspects someone has a tiny bit of internalized 1930s era attitude regarding what is and is not acceptable for a grown man. 

“So if you trust your Sam, why you gotta tell yourself you can’t miss your Peggy and still be mine?”

“We abandoned you,” Steve whispers, and there it is, the hitch in his voice that breaks the last shreds of control. 

“Oh sweetheart, I was gone before you got off that train,” Barnes tells him, “You didn’t abandon shit.”

Steve shakes his head, drawing in a ragged breath. “I should have looked for you.”

“And what, gotten yourself wiped and turned into a fucking weapon too? Stevie, we’ve been over this. Not your fault. Never your fault.

“But I…”

A finger is against his lips before the rest of the sentence can pass through them. 

“You did nothing wrong. Nothing. Not tonight, not on that train, not in Brooklyn, you did nothing wrong, Stevie.”

“Buck, I left you!” Steve insists.

“S’okay if you don’t believe me,” Barnes tells him quietly. “I’ll keep saying it til you do. I’m back now, and you’re not going to keep punishing yourself for something you didn’t fuck up to begin with.”

Steve doesn’t reply, just lays his head against Barnes’ chest and closes his eyes. The shaking eases, and the only way Sam knows that he’s crying is the periodic movement of Barnes wiping the tear tracks from his face. 

This, Sam thinks as he watches something he feels very much as though he’s intruding upon, is what it truly looks like when war comes home with the men who leave to fight it. Nothing showy. Nothing huge and flashy and in your face about the damage war does to the soul. Just a man who gave everything and then some, breaking apart in the middle of the night on a gym floor in the arms of the one person more broken than him. The one person with a chance at putting those pieces back together again and mending the cracks with something that might finally hold.


End file.
